So...whats for dinner?
Comments
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Ick on insects on the menu.
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Hoping everyone it's feeling chipper today! I need some suggestions. Each year my husband's family plans a Christmas party with food from a different country. Last year it was Greek/Mediterranean and it was wonderful. This year is German. I volunteered for a meat dish. I originally was going to do rouladen, but decided that would be too labor intensive for 20+ people. I then decided on sauerbraten, thinking I could even cook it in the crockpot, but now I'm thinking that might be too much of an "exotic" taste for many. Even though they're of German stock, they are pretty unadventurous eaters. I made a version as a trial last night. It was good but still might be a bit sour for their tastes. Someone else is already making sauerkraut and some kind of sausage or that would be the obvious solution.
Anybody have any suggestions or recipes to share? -
Last night's dinner was a cannellini bean and sausage soup. When I cooked the beans using a Jacques Pepin recipe, I was surprised by how little flavor there was, so I pumped up the flavor of the chicken stock [homemade] to compensate. The results were very good, which is good since there is enough for one more meal leftover.
Auntie, German food that doesn't need to be cooked a la minute is a challenge. But a challenge that intriques me. My first thought was a veal roast, but Dr. Google found this: http://recipesbycindy.homestead.com/RoastPork.html. Something like this would be very tasty and not too much effort for the number of people that you plan to serve. Served with some spaetzle and I would be a happy diner! And the best part? Pork loin is very affordable. I don't own any German cookbooks so that is as much as I can do.
*susan*
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Nancy - I looked at a couple recipes for sauerbraten and my suggestion would be to cut the vinegar in half. It would probably solve the "too sour" problem without giving up all the attributes of the dish.
Joyce - enjoy the steak dinner tonight!
Susan - good call on adjusting the seasoning of the stock. It's odd how often reviews of chefs' recipes include how people need to "pump up" the flavor!
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LuvRVing... the thing is, I have had great success with all Jacques Pepin recipes. I have to assume that his mother [a headnote attributes this preparation to her] liked somewhat bland beans! The lesson is to taste taste taste as you "make it up."
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And just how do you pump up the stock flavor? Are we talking more salt?
DH's cataract procedure went well on Friday and he immediately became delirious about the possibility that he might be able to spend the rest of his life without glasses....after 57 years with them........but not so fast!!! He learned yesterday that his problem of binocular disparity may well require him to still wear glasses with a prism to correct that. So we (I don't have a choice since I live here;) are totally focused on this issue....24/7.....or so far, 24/2 ! I guess it is really easy to become obsessed with changes @one's vision, but I hope he can make peace with still needing these prism glasses. I am just happy that his vision will be much better than it has been in all the time I've known him......and no more coke bottles! And maybe he will be able to find requested items around the house (or is that a gene problem?;) It must really be frustrating tho to have binocular disparity. To be continued in our house......
Last night we ordered in from a popular Italian restaurant in our town, Sweet Basil. Got fried calamari and lamb shank with polenta and vegetables ( so delicious!). Because they forgot to include the spicy aioli with the calamari, requiring us to return for it (this seems to happen to us a lot at this very busy place !) we were gifted with a pint of their spicy tomato sauce (which I prefer with calamari:) and another pint of their pesto sauce! That was definitely worth the drive up the street!
Maybe I'll get some shrimp to make pesto shrimp over linguini.
Michelle, we saw the Salem Polcari's when there and I was surprised to see one out of the North End...and they have more? Have a great meal!
I'm just starting to think about the holidays while you are all actually getting trees up(am always slow about this but have no work related excuses this year).
DS1, DDIL and our tornadic almost two year old DGS and new baby girl are coming to visit for a few days right before Christmas. So I am thinking about how to have easy meals, but would also like to have a "meet the baby" sort of open house that Sunday, for neighbors and friends and need to get some food planned for that. Would live to hear any ideas for easy (maybe freezable) finger food for that event. Hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew with these plans with my not so great energy. We'll see....
At least holiday shopping is being done on line....definitely easier!
Go Pats! -
RE: Pumping up the chicken stock. I took 2 quarts of homemade salt-free chicken stock and reduced to 1 quart. The chicken stock I used last night is just chicken and water so a blank canvass. In a separate pan, I sauteed some shallots in olive oil and then added two tablespoons of tomato paste which cooked for 10 minutes. [This is an Italian trick I picked up and what a difference it makes!] I added salt to the shallots and then again to the tomato paste. Then the stock was added and some of the bean liquid. At this point, I salted to taste. I didn't add any herbs since the beans had lots of them. Simmered this for 20 minutes and then salted to taste. Added the cooked beans and the smoked sausage. Let simmer for 10 minutes, and then tasted. The addition of the unsalted beans meant the soup needed just a pinch more salt. Husband added tons of pepper at the table, as he always does.
Freeze ahead nibbles is always a challenge, but consider mini-quiche, cheese gougeres, spanikopita, and/or meatballs. Several days ahead to keep in the fridge, herbed goat cheese salmon pinrolls, a sauce for the meatballs, roasted vegetable terrine, or if you are very ambitious, paté, dips for raw veggies, deviled eggs [keep the filling and the white separate until that morning though], a strata or frittata. In the pantry, roasted nuts. I often do several varieties since several people at my gatherings don't care for spicy. I think you can keep boiled shrimp in the fridge for a day all set out on a platter, and then make a nice aioli or cocktail dipping sauce. Phew! Now I have some ideas for my Christmas gatherings!
We too have a Sweet Basil nearby, but it is a Thai restaurant!
*susan*
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Thanks so much for those ideas, Susan! I was planning on the mini quiche and the meatballs, but spanikopita is a good idea, and shrimp is always a crowd favorite. I no longer make pates due to everyone's health concerns, and certainly do not want consumable leftovers in our house or DH would be slathering it on bread for his lunch!
Glad you can use this sharing exercise for your own gatherings!
Yes, I know about Thai Sweet Basil...I think there is one in Brookline also. -
Would someone please send me some lamb shanks??! They are impossible to find around here and I'm dying for Julia's lamb shanks and beans. All you lamb cooks are making me jealous!
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Lacey, this is a wonderful appetizer that you can make well ahead and freeze and bake at the last minute. I always have some made up in my freezer.
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/prosciutto-fontina-pinwheels
Michelle, I thought of reducing the vinegar. Actually, I made a modified version using buttermilk and lemon juice. DH loved it, but he loves German food so would be the least likely to object to anything. Susan, the pork recipe looks like an excellent option. I'll check to make sure no one else is bringing pork and if not, that may be the ticket. Thanks guys! -
auntienance - We have big potlucks in my quilting class several times a year.
The instructor always brings sausages that her husband barbecues, then cuts into bite-size pieces. There's usually a variety of different kinds, but because they are German, there's always German sausage.
That's one of the first dishes to be cleaned out - they're so yummy!
Anyway, if you have access to a BBQ, that's just a different way of doing sausage. You can even BBQ them one day, then the next day just cover the pan with foil and heat them in the oven for the party.
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That meal from the Italian Sweet Basil sounds scrumptious. Also Susan's sausage and white beans.
Auntie, do you have a Fresh Market in your area? Ours always has lamb shanks. Your husband's family sound pretty adventurous in their holiday meal planning.
Two delicious party foods that can be made in advance are shrimp mold and crab mold served with crackers or toasted garlicky baguette slices, which are available in our supermarkets. I always make a shrimp mold for Christmas and it's supposed to be made no earlier than the day before. I have also made artichoke balls that freeze well. You put them on a pan and heat them at the time of the party. I have recipes for all of the above.
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Carole, sadly we don't. I wish we did.
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I've been following this thread, copying recipes, bookmarking, etc. It's a great source not only for dinner but for other info - i.e. Michelle's post about Moisturel.
Michelle, I have always had problem skin and I'm wondering which product you use. I just checked the company website and see several listed.
If you see this, would you mind posting the one that's worked for you? I see that most of the products have very good reviews on Amazon.
Thanking you in advance!
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Michelle- Glad your feeling better today. And ick on the insects on the menu I for one will stop going out to eat.
Nancy- Since someone else is bringing a sausage and saurkraut dish, how about a Germain chocolate cake or a German onion pie, it is pretty good. I will copy/paste it after this. Also for my saurkraut I use caraway seeds and some brown sugar to cut the sourness out.
4 thick slices of bacon, diced
2 cups peeled and chopped yellow onion
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sour cream
1 tblsp flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 9-inch pie shell, unbaked
Preheat oven to 400 degrees f
Saute bacon. Drain most of the fat from the pan. Add the onions and saute
until clear. Do not brown. Set aside to cool.
Beat the eggs and sour cream together in a medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle the
flour over the top and beat it in. Stir in the salt and pepper.
Prick the bottom of the pie shell several times with a fork. Spread the
onions and bacon over the bottom of the pie shell. Pour the sour cream
mixture over the top.
Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees f and bake for another 15
minutes or until pie is nicely browned. Serve hot! -
Lacey- Glad your DH eye sight is better I bet he is over the moon about not wearing glasses anymore I had both lens in my eyes done, I was almost blind in the left eye after surgery and I got the patch off home I looked at my floor and thought oh my god it is dirty I thought it was clean before, what a shock that was lol! You could make some meatballs and freeze them, then on the day of the party put them in a crock pot with some sweet and sour sauce- cook some wings ahead of time, and day of party put your favoite suace on them and bake to reheat. I love doing a artichoke, spinach dip its one of my favorite recipes if you want that let me know. And some cheeses with cold cuts and cracker/baquettes.
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LeeA - it's Moisturel Therapeutic cream - in a jar. I order it from Amazon. It lasts a long, long time!
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It's been about 3 weeks since I've been able to do more than just scan the posts, so I guess I'll have to jump back in, more or less from the start, again.
Michelle, I'm gladd you're feeling better. I usually get a cold whenver I fly...maybel I'll get lucky and not get one this time. How would "Moisture" work for hands? My hands are still a wreck from all the handwashing/hand wipes/alcohol "cream". Before falling asleep, everyone on the team would slather their hands with hand cream, put on a pair of exam gloves and wake up to only "horribly dry" hands.
As for the insects, some don't taste bad if you don't know they are on the menu. :-) I still don't know if I'd pay money for them.
Lacey, both my mom and her mom had the cataracts removed. It brought so many positive changes to their lives. As a boy, I can remember my grandmother was *SO* excited about seeing the birds in other than brown tones.
My project of having my mom help translate the German recipes from her dad's folks got side tracked by my deployment. I do want to get that going again. If I was farther along, I might have been able to offer up some fresh (150 year old) ideas.
When I cook down the turkey bones, I "cook" the stock down so I don't have so many 1/2 pint jars to freeze.
Eric
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Eric, perhaps you could try Aquaphor cream for those dry hands. It has certainly worked for many radiation patients, and I use my leftovers for any dry feet or hand problems and it works really well.
Tonight we ended up having the most delicious salmon filets baked with pesto (thank you Sweet Basil!) on a bed of lentils with shallots and red pepper flakes,
brussels sprouts,(cut from the stalk I picked up at Trader's), and a garden salad. Really satisfying...... -
Eric - for your hands I'd try Moisturel lotion, it will probably be absorbed faster. You can get it on Amazon.
I don't think I've ever come down with a cold as a result of flying. I just hope I didn't infect anyone on our flights...lol. I suspect I was already past the contagious stage when we left Boston.
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Michelle, good marketing with the visuals....getting a cut?
Oh, and you can bet that your waning virus was not the only one on that plane! -
Michelle, thanks so much! That's the one that has all the great reviews on Amazon. Actually, all the products do but that one in particular has the most reviews and many people say it was recommended by their dermatologist.
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Back from NYC all I can say is AMAZING! Every meal was truly great...never got a bad one. My favorite was a little family owned italian rest right around the corner from my daughters apt. The owner came to the table to talk with us and only the family works there, sons waiting the tables, wife making homemade pasta yumm
Saw the Rockettes Christmas show.. I was in a trance through the whole show, not just rockettes dancing but a major Christmas production Live nativity scene with real sheep and camels (saw the camel bus parked outside LOL) Costumes were surreal.
Saw a dress in Bergdorf Goodman for only 8,000 dollars that I loved (that was the sale price) maybe in my next life.
Cant beleive I have to readjust to the real world and cook some dinner tonight. Might be a challenge.
Lacey...what does green kindergarten paste tast like? ha ha
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$8,000 for a dress...
Wow.
That's how much money my parents lent my ex-husband and me to help with the down payment on our first house back in 1982 or 1983.
One of my favorite Italian restaurants was in NYC and we tried to find it when we were there last year but it had closed years before. It was very tiny and the owners/waiters, etc. spoke in Italian to one another. My husband is Italian (and from New York state) so we're always looking for good Italian restaurants when we go back to visit - although very few restaurants compare to my mother-in-law's cooking. Her mother was born in Italy and she grew up learning her style of cooking and then later, she took some courses at the Culinary Institute (they live in Poughskeepsie). She makes a soup that's absolutely delicious. She taught me how to make it last year but I've yet to try it on my own.
It is so good. It's called passatelli, which my husband says means "little worm" in Italian but I don't know if that's really true. I think she learned to make it from her mother-in-law, who grew up in the Calabria region.
She also taught me how to make the family eggplant parmesan which I've made quite a bit over the years.
Last night I bought two freezer-safe glass containers to freeze the pasta sauce I made last week. I typically freeze the leftovers in plastic containers but I'm trying to be very careful about the BPA factor so for the first time, I'm trying glass. It goes against my every grain to put glass in the freezer but on the other hand, I often put glass candle containers in the freezer in order to freeze the wax enough to easily remove it and I think I've only ever broken one of those glass jars.
Anyway, I'm hoping these freezer-safe glass containers will work. If they do, I plan on using them for eggplant parmesan as well (actually, our eggplant parmesan recipe doesn't include parmesan - it calls for romano). I like the idea of freezing it ahead and then by the time it thaws completely, sticking the same container in the oven. I typically use aluminum pans (throwaway) for the eggplant parmesan (romano!) but now I'm nervous about aluminum as well - lol! I'm thinking all this "oh no, everything's gonna give me more cancer" thing will eventually pass (somewhat).
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I get a cold every single time I fly.
Having a bit of bad news here. DH was just diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I've had diabetes for the past 12 years and although I hate that he's dealing with this, in some ways it might be a good thing. Loving to cook as I do, I don't always make the best food choices for myself. Typically it seems, I'm more concerned for him than I am for myself and as a result we're counting carbs diligently. So this is a good reason to get back on the straight and narrow instead of frolicking with pie and that extra serving of pasta that I love so much (even if it is Dreamfields). Maybe I'll even drop that 10 pounds I picked up in the last 3 months during my baking frenzy.
Having said all that, I have no idea what tonights dinner is. -
I'm sorry to hear that, auntienance. My husband was on the edge of being diabetic in the summer of 2011.
I was so concerned about it (my father had type 2 diabetes) that I suggested we go on the 17-Day Diet which eventually turned into the 17 month diet or more accurately, an overall change in our eating habits.
I intitiated it because several people in his family had experienced great results with this particular "diet" (I'm not really much for diets per se but this one is the first one that's ever really changed my overall eating habits). I needed to lose some weight as well and so, like you, I decided we needed to buy the book and bite the bullet.
Well, he ended up losing SIXTY POUNDS!
I've lost about 25 pounds.
The last time he went in for his bloodwork the doctor was amazed at the difference in all of his numbers. Unfortunately, his high blood pressure issues remain but they aren't quite as pronounced as they used to be (less edema, better numbers, etc.).
On the downside, I ended up with cancer(!); but I certainly don't blame the "diet"/eating changes - actually, my second-opinion breast surgeon said just the other day that the 25 pound weight loss might have ended up saving my life (I lost a lot of weight in my breasts and my tumor really stood out like the sore thumb that it was).
Good luck with the changes!
Editing to add: We've just recently started eating pasta/pasta sauce again on rare occasions. One reason being that I'm worried that we're not getting enough lycopene...plus, he's Italian and now that we've come this far, I don't think a "treat" (as in pasta or eggplant parmesan) is that bad - as long as we don't go completely overboard.
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auntienance - so sorry to hear about your DHs diabetes dx. My DH was dx'd with severe kidney disease in 2011, and that changed his eating habits completely. He had to be on a very restricted diet (no red meat,and this was a guy who could put away a 32 oz ribeye!) and he had to chart and log in not only his food, but all his vital signs every day.
It changed the way I cooked, and the way I looked at food. I had to be very diligent about exactly how much of any ingredient I put in something - a challenge, considering how many casseroles I used to make.
But when I went on my Optifast program last March, it was SO easy, now that our kitchen was revamped with much healthier foods and the tools we needed to keep track of our intake.
The good news is, Type II diabetes can be reversed with good nutrition and exercise.
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Thin slices of zucchini (the long way) make a suitable substitute for pasta. Just mix it in your hot sauce at the last minute before serving - no need to actually "cook" it.
I've been diabetic for 11 years and have been in good control until recently. I think the steroids have done their damage. Time will tell if it's permanent, my fasting numbers have been about 30 points higher than my normal range.
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Thanks everyone. Actually I had been doing fine with an A1c of 6 and a weight loss of 45 pounds after chemo. My problems started in October when I became possessed by the ghost of Betty Crocker and felt compelled to bake something daily. I think I'm over it now.
I know how hard the steroids are on your bg Michelle. What has amazed me is how much a 10 pound weight gain has affected my readings. -
You gals are busy.... I had Chemo last week and I travel for it and then I have been passing kideny stones so I have been off line most of the past 2 weeks. I scanned over the stuff you guys have been cooking looks great. I finally felt good enough to cook last night I made grilled pizza with my family. It is always great family time even though I don't like Pizza. Tonight it is steak and potatoes, in FL it is still wonderful weather to grill so we are grilling up a storm. I just wish I was hungry. post chemo non hunger issues..... I may make a juice and call it dinner any good recipies for a nice juice. I am not very motivating today sorry. maybe next time. Oh yea I can recomend this it is SIN in a TIN it is great. he ships sininatin.orgeveryone that try's it loves it.
have a great night I'll try to keep up.
Christine
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